Adding mint Mentos candy to a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke produces a fountain of soda foam that can reach 3 m high. A demonstration such as this can get a "Wow" out of most audiences, usually followed by a "Do it again!"--but can it be used to teach anything? The answer is a definite "Yes," and what follows is a guided inquiry activity that…

The quantum semester of a typical two-semester physical chemistry course is divided into two parts. The initial focus is on quantum mechanics and simple model systems for which the Schrodinger equation can be solved in closed form, but it then shifts in the second half to atoms and molecules, for which no closed solutions exist. The underlying…

Used since the time of the ancient Egyptians as a method for transferring liquids from one vessel to another, the siphon is a dependable tool. Although, the act of siphoning beer from a fermentation barrel or wine from a demijohn is a skill that has been passed down from generation to generation, do we really know how the siphon works? It is…

Coulometric titrations involve the quantification of analyte by measurements of current and time. In most coulometric titrations, the anode and cathode are placed in isolated cells that are connected by a salt bridge. By contrast, the experiments described here involve coulometric titrations (of acidic protons in solution) using a silver anode and…

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a common experiment in upper-level undergraduate biochemistry, molecular biology, and forensic laboratory courses as reagents and thermocyclers have become more affordable for institutions. Typically, instructors design PCR primers to amplify the region of interest and the students prepare their samples for…

In 1984, a teacher was successfully prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive. The case centred around chemically prepared hydrogen that was dried by bubbling it through concentrated sulfuric(VI) acid and then passed over hot copper(II) oxide. The procedure was often carried out quantitatively to find the mass of copper in a sample of…

This review explores Meyers and Crawford's "Teaching science as a cultural way of knowing: Merging authentic inquiry, nature of science, and multicultural strategies" by examining how they combine the use of inquiry-based science instruction with multicultural strategies. In this conversation, I point to the need of specific discourse strategies…

In a regional young-earth creationist museum, objects are presented as if they speak for themselves, purportedly embodying proof that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, that humans have lived on earth throughout its history, and that dinosaurs and humans lived simultaneously. In public lectures, tours, and displays, museum associates…

Bohr's model of the atom is considered to be important by general chemistry textbooks. A shortcoming of this model was that it could not explain the spectra of atoms containing more than one electron. To increase the explanatory power of the model, Sommerfeld hypothesized the existence of elliptical orbits. This study aims to elaborate a framework…

Most undergraduate chemistry courses and a few high school honors courses, which focus on physical chemistry and quantum mechanics, are highly mathematically-oriented. At the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, we developed a new module for high school students, titled "Chemistry--From 'the Hole' to 'the Whole': From the Nanoscale to…

We investigated how students articulate uncertainty when they are engaged in structured scientific argumentation tasks where they generate, examine, and interpret data to determine the existence of exoplanets. In this study, 302 high school students completed 4 structured scientific arguments that followed a series of computer-model-based…

Current approaches in Science Education attempt to enable students to develop an understanding of the nature of science, develop fundamental scientific concepts, and develop the ability to structure, analyze, reason, and communicate effectively. Students pose, solve, and interpret scientific problems, and eventually set goals and regulate their…

Several studies came to the conclusion that chaotic phenomena are worth including in high school and undergraduate education. The double pendulum is one of the simplest systems that is chaotic; therefore, numerical simulations and theoretical studies of it have been given large publicity, and thanks to its spectacular motion, it has become one of…

We study the greenhouse effect on a model satellite consisting of a tungsten sphere surrounded by a thin spherical, concentric glass shell, with a small gap between the sphere and the shell. The system sits in vacuum and is heated by sunlight incident along the "z"-axis. This development is a generalization of the simple treatment of the…

This study explores how elementary teachers and students use hedges (tentative words such as "maybe") and boosters (expressions of certainty such as "clearly" and "obviously") during science inquiry discussions. Drawing upon semiotic theory, we examine explicit thematic patterns (semantic meaning relations among science concepts) as well as hidden…